Posts tagged ‘dessert’

Please don’t call me a stupid girl, but science was never my favorite subject in high school. Despite childhood obsessions with dinosaurs, the NASA space program, and the process of mummification (yes, they did remove the brains through the nose with knitting-needle-style hooks), my interest in becoming a real archaeologist or physicist faded once I had to memorize more than the behavior of protons, neutrons, and electrons.

So imagine my surprise when I discovered that making caramel, a highly scientific process, is one of my favorite kitchen party tricks.

Caramel is basically two ingredients: sugar mixed with cream. Sounds so simple, right? But there’s a clever chemistry that makes the business a bit trickier than you’d think, and here’s why.
>> Read on to learn the trick to no-fail caramel sauce. >>

All of Europe is on vacation and no one wants to cook. Enter Parisian correspondent Christine Miksis with an appropriately boozy solution to the summer heat!

We’re smack dab in the middle of summer. It’s sweltering hot. The back of your thighs are stuck to the leather sofa again (It doesn’t get sexier than that, no?) You just got home from a long day of work and want to take the edge off and keep cool at the same time.

I propose a very refreshing, relaxing Italian solution to all of your problems: red wine granita.

As luscious as creamy sorbet is, I like its icier cousin granita just the same. In fact, I might like her a little bit better and I’ll tell you why. For starters, to make granita at home there is no need for any fancy-schmancy kitchen equipment whatsoever. Best of all, it only involves about five minutes of manual labor, and that is simply to make the simple syrup.
>> Read on for the five-minute red wine granita recipe. >>

Today we’re proud to introduce Eating My Words, a new feature by contributor Rebecca Peters-Golden where we’ll revisit food scenes from literature and recreate the dishes described therein. Rebecca, a graduate student in literature at Indiana University, is also a compulsive baker who has been known to make three-layer chocolate cakes out of boredom, so we’re happy to make the most out of her vast talents with this series.

While visiting my sister in Philadelphia this past December, I was bemoaning the grayness of winter and wishing for more fun in my life. Always eager to make me stop whining help, my sister suggested that I participate in the Philadelphia Artclash Collective‘s annual “Fun-A-Day,” through which I might combat precisely such grayness and lack of amusement by creating something every day of January. Projects ranged from the artistic (some genius painted a picture of a Buffy character every day) to the happenstance, and everything in between. But what would I do that would be truly Fun?!

In the year and a half before Fun-A-Day, I had been working on my dissertation in literature and feeling a creeping anxiety that reading for pleasure was becoming a thing of the past. To this end, I wanted not only to do something that would combine my favorite things—reading and cooking—but also to remind myself of the pleasure I take in reading by removing it from the realm of the purely academic and placing it in the realm of . . . well . . . fun.

So, I decided to recreate some of my favorite moments of food in literature. And then, you know, eat them. Now, six months and many, many sticks of butter later, I feel at peace with literature and more excited about food than ever. For my first good food story, then, here is Truman Capote’s combination of literature and food: a scene from In Cold Blood, Capote’s non-fiction novel that tells the story of the 1959 Clutter murder in Holcomb, Kansas.

>> Read on to find a bloody good recipe for cherry pie inspired by In Cold Blood. >>

I was planning on making one of the Barefoot Contessa’s recipes the other night when I noticed she called for 3 extra large eggs instead of 3 large eggs. I didn’t have any extra large on hand—what is the difference and should I be buying two sizes of eggs for my recipes?

The short version is no, you shouldn’t be bothered with keeping two different sizes of eggs in your fridge unless you’re a baking maniac or a rabid Ina Garten fan. Large eggs are the baking standard, measuring about 2 oz. by weight. Extra large eggs weigh in at 2.25 oz. by comparison.

Barely anyone but the Barefoot Contessa (who apparently has a major jones for the XL size; I have cooked probably one of her recipes in my lifetime, so I trust you readers to back me up on this) specifically calls for extra large eggs in their recipes.

Pastry geniuses Dorie Greenspan, Gale Gand, Johnny Iuzzini, and the incomparable David Lebovitz all specify the large size in their recipes, as David explained to me, “In restaurants, large eggs are the norm (at least where I’ve worked), so many recipes tend toward large eggs.”
>> Read on to find out the one instance where it makes a difference to use the egg size called for in the recipe. >>

Recently Dan and I were perusing the freezer aisles during one of our frequent Target visits (yes, we go to Target more than is probably healthy—it’s a bonding experience) when he started soliloquizing about the fatal flaw in Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food ice cream. It would be his favorite flavor, apparently, if only the chocolate ice cream were switched out for vanilla. “Oh, I can do that,” I said, and immediately wanted to pull those words right back into my mouth.

While I don’t advocate that a sane person undertake the task of making homemade fudge, caramel sauce, marshmallow fluff, and vanilla ice cream to create your husband’s dream ice cream flavor, one of those components is completely do-able in less time than it takes to try on a Liberty of London dress in one of those crazy Target particleboard dressing rooms.

May I present you with my recipe for the world’s easiest homemade marshmallow fluff. Use it for homemade fluffernutters, fold it into your vanilla ice cream along with some toasted coconut for a pseudo-macaroon sensation, spread it on chocolate bars and graham crackers and go to town with a kitchen torch.

Or, you know, go whole hog and make homemade Phish Food ice cream. It’s in the freezer right now, waiting for Dan’s verdict. I’ll keep you posted.
>> Read on for the marshmallow fluff recipe, ready in 15 minutes. >>